The Oklahoma Railway Museum's newsletter, the Dispatcher, is usually sent by email, but we also send a printed copy if requested. That seems to be the general trend! As of late our publication rate has severely dropped off due to editors being overly busy.

At IRM, anyone can sign up for a monthly newsletter sent via email. It provides a short summary of upcoming events, new acquisitions, donation pleas, etc.

However, members of IRM are also sent printed copies of the quarterly Rail and Wire. This is a much longer newsletter containing much more detailed articles about happenings at the museum.

As far as I know, this format seems to work pretty well.

To Alexander's point, "entertainment" is not how I would describe this function of the newsletter. Having well-researched articles of historical or educational value is part of the mission of museums. They may be enjoyable to read, and certainly they should not be some kind of dull textbook, but they aren't entertainment in the sense of a romance novel.

At Branford, we had a monthly black-and-white, 4-page rag that served primarily as a news outlet. About 8 years ago we realized that it was just impossible to deliver timely news via printed media, at least
on any sort of budget that we could meet. Thanks to anti-social media, our members often new about a car move, or a collections change, the day it happened, maybe even the same hour!

We moved to a full-color, magazine style "newsletter", very much in the spirit of IRM's Rail & Wire, which I think is among the top newsletters. The publication schedule is several times per year.

For a while, we were also doing monthly, or even more frequent, online-only newsletters. Our metrics showed that basically nobody was reading them! I think there is something comforting and tangible about a product that you can hold in your hand and which looks good too. Plus, all you need to read paper is light, which often is completely free. No software issues, no dead batteries, no internet outages.

Members tell me that they look forward to receiving the printed magazine and that they read it almost entirely cover-to-cover. We use a variety of other means such as Facebook, Instagram, and mass email, to distribute "newsy" stuff like special events or little tidbits from operations, railway maintenance, or collections restoration/maintenance.

These are completely different types of communications. Those who've never done publications might not realize -- it is a lot of work! Making sure facts are correct, photos are properly captioned and attributed, proofreading, etc. As several people have pointed out in this thread, the newsletter archive is your museum history archive. 50 years from now, will these ephemeral things such as "tweets" be preserved in some accessible form?

folks,
I belong to several museums; some of the better publications out there are the Rail & Wire at IRM, the now color newsletters at the WW&F Railway Museum and the Western Railway Museum.

I am a 70 year old man who likes to hold the publication in his ever more shaky hands.

I do not look for news of the day on the paper copies; I can get that on Facebook. I want to enjoy the old photos, the in-depth details and the money matters that you can only see in the paper newsletters.

I have every issue of the Seashore's Dispatch since 1958, from some of the older members. They are wonderful and make my retirement days something to look forward to.

I am the Periodicals Librarian of the Western Railway Museum. Please do not throw away your newsletters; find a museum's library or a younger member to give them to. They are the history of the railroad preservation movement, from the past and today.

The exception is TRAINS; it has always had such a high circulation that nearly everyone interested in this subject has a run of it.

Ted Miles, Library and Archives Dept
Western Railway Museum.

P.S. The Review has been published since 1946 and we have copies available going back many years. Write to me at the WRM or at tedmiles1950@gmail.com if you are interested in getting any of them.

TM